Hospital design and planning

The Whipps Cross Redevelopment is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to transform the hospital and the site to serve communities for generations to come, improving health outcomes and reducing inequalities.

We have been engaging with staff, patients and the public to develop proposals for a ‘hospital in a garden and a garden in a hospital’, reconnecting the hospital with its Epping Forest setting.The new hospital will be designed to benefit patients and staff and ensure the design has flexibility to respond to future healthcare demands, including a pandemic.

The designs include:

• A cluster of ward modules around a central hub, allowing different departments to work together more effectively and helping to minimise walking distances for patients and staff, making the hospital easy to get around with better wayfinding
• Over a third more clinical space than the current hospital
• More than 70% single rooms, compared to around 17% today.
• Flexible design and standardisation in order to maximise the opportunity for the use of modern methods of construction
• The flexibility and adaptability to respond to changing healthcare needs in the future
• An exemplar ‘smart hospital’ of the future with a sustainable building that is designed to achieve the target of net zero carbon

 

 

Transforming the wider site

The redevelopment of Whipps Cross goes beyond the hospital itself. The proposals aim to transform the wider Whipps Cross site and position the new hospital at the heart of a new neighbourhood, providing up to 1,500 much needed new homes alongside other health and wellbeing services, leisure and cultural facilities and new green public spaces - bringing real benefits and investment to the local community.

The heritage elements of the original Edwardian hospital buildings will be retained and revived as new homes, restaurants and commercial spaces around a new park.

View of the new park from the new hospital

The new Whipps Cross Hospital aims to be net zero carbon and more sustainably heated and powered using the best and latest green technology.  Flood mitigation and water management will be a key feature of how the buildings are designed. The drainage will be designed to promote increased water use efficiency, improved water quality, and enhanced biodiversity.

Our plans envisage that the hospital and site will be greener and better connected. We will be working with councils and transport authorities to improve transport links, encouraging more pedestrian and cycling access and improved parking with better disabled access and electric vehicle charging. 

We will create new parklands with urban greening and tree planting, creating new recreation spaces for our neighbourhood, with  more than 50,000sqm of publicly accessible green space which will improve air quality, and mean a 10% increase in biodiversity.

We are also proposing to build a new car park, with a bridge linking it directly to the new hospital, to improve parking for our patients, staff and visitors. This will be built ahead of the new hospital being completed and will included disabled parking spaces and several charging points to enable patients, staff and visitors to charge electric vehicles.

Outline Planning Applications have been approved

The planning applications for the new hospital at Whipps Cross were approved by the Waltham Forest Council planning committee on 24 November. We submitted two outline planning applications: one application for the hospital and car park, and another application for the wider site. 

This is another big milestone for the programme, getting us even closer to building the brand new state-of-the-art hospital at Whipps Cross. The planning applications will now be subject to Mayor of London approval and completion of the legal agreements. View the application on Waltham Forest Council's website here by searching for the application reference numbers 211245 and 211244. 

Before we submitted our planning applications, we asked for feedback on our emerging plans for the hospital and the wider site with the public, patients and staff in focus groups, workshops, public meetings and through an online survey with more than 1,152 responses.

View our booklet, published in February 2021, which provides more information on the proposals.

Demolition works are underway

The new Whipps Cross Hospital development started on site in March 2021 with the demolition of disused buildings to prepare the ground for the construction of a new hospital.

There will be no disruption to current services, because the new hospital will be built on disused land allowing the current hospital to remain fully operational during construction of the new one.

We’re safely removing the old, disused buildings on the nurses’ site in order to prepare the ground for the future construction of a new hospital. The demolition contractor, Squibb Group Limited , is carrying out a phased demolition of the buildings, expected to complete by early 2022.

The buildings are being demolished in phases (see map below for locations), to minimise disruption on the site. As each old building is removed, new temporary car parking will take its place in order to maintain current parking provision during the demolition.

This demolition represents the exciting start of the proposed redevelopment of Whipps Cross which is aiming to bring a new state-of-the-art hospital to Waltham Forest by 2026 followed by a new neighbourhood with new homes, green spaces and local facilities.

Further information can be found here and we have also published a Frequently Asked Questions document about the demolition works.